Strong HBO hospice special

Beth Witrogen McLeod

Published 4:00 am, Monday, March 18, 1996

RALPH ARMSTRONG was a rugged 62-year-old firefighter from San Francisco before he was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. Anna Turner, a 46-year-old mother of two, was a telephone company worker from Queens, N.Y., who became bedridden after developing lung cancer. Michael Merseal Jr. was born in Missoula, Mont., with an incurable brain disease that left him mute and unable to walk for all of his eight years.

Tough stuff: the subjects of "Letting Go: A Hospice Journey," an HBO documentary by award-winning filmmakers Susan Froemke and Albert Maysles, that debuts Monday (7:15 p.m.). The verite feature-length film (1-1/4 hours) is shot without narrative or script, and takes the viewer into the final months of three patients and their families, with the hospice teams who care for them.

The film's stated objective is "to help people cope with the pain and loss that come with facing death" through three hospice programs that, through their ministrations, reveal the underlying human dynamics that come to bear when a loved one is dying.

Latest entertainment videos

Venus Williams Says This Piece of Advice from Serena Changed Her LifeInStyleTime

Bon Jovi Leads Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 2018 ClassWibbitz

Kumail Nanjiani: AP's 2017 Breakthrough EntertainersAP

Slime! Sheet Masks! and Even More Fads and Viral Moments That Dominated 2017PeopleTime

Chinese Street Vendor Cooks Up Sweet Banana RotiStoryful

A cracking Christmas with 'The Crown'AP

Hot or cold for Christmas? 'Murder' stars decideAP

NBC Delays 'This Is Us' Midseason Premiere by One WeekEWTime

AP Exclusive: 'Star Wars' stars make dreams come trueAP

Four-time Emmy winner Froemke has said this film was important to make because "in our culture, we tend to avoid thinking about death. When terminally ill people have their pain controlled, they have an enormous opportunity to work out issues they've left unresolved, and there is the potential to achieve a good leave-taking."

The filmmakers go to great lengths to examine the emotional and spiritual support possible in a system that views dying not as an outrage, but as part of a life process worth paying attention to. Family relationships play a key role, as end-of-life events scrape away at long-held grudges - and fears.

One of the three hospices profiled in "Letting Go" is Home Hospice of Sonoma County, a Santa Rosa organization that is one of the first hospices in the country, established in 1976, and one of the country's pioneers in innovative programs.

"Letting Go" takes no prisoners. Maysles and crew non-intrusively follow Armstrong through the process of coming to terms not only with the fact that he is dying, whereas a few weeks earlier he was backpacking in the Sierra, but also with the reality that he had estranged both his wife and daughter over many years, something he never acknowledged.

"It's very difficult to face death," Armstrong tells Brad Stuart, Home Hospice medical director, in response to a question about how he feels, crying for the first time in 50 years. "I was raised by a very strict mother who believed in biting the bullet. What's different is the people who work here; everybody has compassion. That's something I've never experienced before."

Such a turnaround is a possibility that hospice workers watch for, Stuart says. "Letting go like that is a major doorway to a new place for that person where, once they fall apart, they have a chance to maybe put things back (together) in a totally different way.

"The core of this whole thing," Stuart says ultimately,

"is helping patients and families let go of things that have kept them constricted their whole lives. Powerful transformations happen, miracles happen. It often doesn't even look or feel better; it's not as simple as people healing into something better. It's just fuller, more human."

Much of the documentary deals with necessary losses: of identity, of relationship, of ego. But never of faith. And yet, in the case of Anna Turner, whose family prayed continually for a cure and who herself refused to admit her illness until the very end, loss is seen as a prelude to being able to strip down to the essentials, to family and love, even if death itself has not been accepted.

The most poignant portion of the documentary is toward the end, when the estranged mother of little Michael Merseal Jr. is allowed to visit. His father senses the end is near, and feels that if the boy sees his mother, he can be at peace. An overhead shot records the devastation, the desperation that both parents feel as they caress and talk to their comatose son, sobbing, grieving for what is now, and what never was.

Michael actually died in his mother's arms during the filming, but the film never lapses into the tawdry or morose. What you see is real life; it is up to the viewer to handle it or not.

"Letting Go" also airs March 22, 25 and 30, and April 4. For more information on hospice, call the National Hospice Organization at 1-800-658-8898.&lt;

Latest from the SFGATE homepage:

Click below for the top news from around the Bay Area and beyond. Sign up for our newsletters to be the first to learn about breaking news and more. Go to 'Sign In' and 'Manage Profile' at the top of the page.